What Handwriting Does Not Reveal

What a person does—the work he is engaged in—does not usually show, although potentialities for what he can do are revealed. On the other hand, some occupations do influence handwriting (just as they influence the writers’ points of view) and the expert often recognizes the handwriting of the bookkeeper, the engineer and the artist.

Criminal tendencies will be revealed to the practiced eye of the graphologist, but the criminal, per se, cannot be detected. Who of us is not capable of an art of violence if sufficiently driven by intense emotional fervor ?

The Writer’s Sex – Why can’t we tell a person’s sex from handwriting ? In all of us there are both masculine and feminine components which have nothing to do with physiology. Neither is the age of the writer. We have all met a man we considered feminine or effeminate. We may have labelled him a “fussy old woman,” or even branded him homosexual.

By the same token, there is the woman whose manner, dress, choice of work have caused us to regard her as masculine. Why ? What are the traits that have come to be accepted as masculine, and what are thought of as feminine ? It is a difficult question, because our culture, a succession of wars, the influence of the machine, all have had a share in bringing out either masculine or feminine traits in each of us. There are few of us who can be considered “typically male” or “typically female,” unless we think of the stereotyped “homebody” as essentially feminine, and the manual laborer as the representative of masculinity.

Many psychologists today believe that young children choose their playthings solely as a result of the cultural dictates. A little boy might be equally interested in dolls and trucks, until his parents or friends make it clear that “dolls are for girls, trucks are for boys.”

In an attempt to recognize a sexual difference in handwriting we might use an old measuring rod and tentatively say that female reasoning is subjective while male reasoning is objective, though we know that each sex can reason both ways. We are, therefore, somewhat in the dark. In analyzing handwriting, then, it is important to know the sex of the writer, rather than to guess. Even an expert—although an attempted guess might be correct—could be mistaken.

In present day culture, women seem to have become more masculine. Many people—especially men—have noticed this, and the graphologist sees more signs of independence and greater aggressiveness than a female writer’s grandmother’s handwriting disclosed. And our men appear to have become more “feminine,” less independent and more intuitive. Whether we are moving toward a matriarchy or toward an equalizing of the sexes is a moot question which is under investigation by many social scientists.

The entire subject of why sex is not indicated in handwriting is one for serious speculation to the more than casual student of human nature, and I can only assert from my experience and observation that there are women who enjoy their slavish roles, while a large majority have had a taste of independence and like it. We find them swelling the ranks of the professions, political posts, the world of business, the arts and sciences.

We seem to be confronted with two faces on the same coin: positive effects of woman’s freedom and negative ones. And in the handwriting’s of ostensibly free women, we are bound to see conflict and must be careful how we evaluate it. The same freedom they sought and seem to have found makes it even more difficult for the graphologist to evaluate which sex component is stronger, the masculine or feminine. This makes it more necessary to reinforce the rule: find out the sex of the writer before attempting to make an analysis of handwriting.

The Writer’s Age – Chronological age does not show in handwriting. What will be revealed are signs of maturity or a lack of it. None of us is entirely mature, although we keep striving to achieve maturity on various levels, and then develop only a measure of it. What is maturity ? You may have your own definition, but it seems to me that it means the ability to accept the tedium of life, its responsibilities, and its “slings and arrows” philosophically.
We all know people of mature years who seem never to have grown up emotionally. A man or woman may be mature enough to assume responsibilities in relation to work, or family, or social relations, yet